insomniaville

The End And The Beginning.

On Friday night, Bill and I kicked off the long weekend with dinner at the Tortilla Factory, our favorite Mexican restaurant. The food is generally good and there's always a lot of it, plus they serve enormous margaritas.

As we were finishing dinner, the hostess seated a young, nervous-looking guy at the table next to ours. I swear that I'm not one of those horrible types who looks at single people in restaurants and pities them -- I am and have always been a big fan of going out to eat by oneself whenever and wherever one damn well feels like it. But I noticed that he didn't have a companion. And then, a few minutes later, he did; a young woman walked in and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you," he said. Blind date! I thought. This might be fun to overhear. Alas, our sweet but absent-minded waiter chose that moment to remember to bring the check, and we were on our way.

Out in the car, Bill complained about having to hold in a burp while we were waiting for our check. Now usually I'm not a big fan of public belching. (I know that will surprise those of you who remember me from high school and college. But it's true.) But I told Bill that in this case, he should have done it. Why? Because I figured it would have given the blind date people something to talk about if the conversation lagged. "So, yeah. The weather's supposed to cool off this weekend. And ... um ... so ... man, could you believe that guy who burped? I know! Nobody wants to hear that!" It would have been a surefire conversation rescuer.

Oh well. Another missed opportunity.

Insomniaville Wakes Up.

I had written some long piece about why I stopped the journal, but it ended up sounding so ridiculously self-indulgent and whiny that even I, no stranger to the whiny and self-indulgent, couldn't bring myself to post it. It wasn't a monumental decision at the time; I just lost interest for various reasons. No drama.

But lately I've missed it. I've never gone this long without doing some kind of writing, and I really felt like a part of me was missing. And I've been cringing with embarrassment every time I've had to look at my old, horribly outdated site. My boss has been sending me to CSS classes to bring my web design skills up to something approaching modern. And Bill got me a Powerbook for my birthday last year, and it seemed like a sin to use such a gorgeous machine just to surf the Web, even via a shiny AirPort base station.

So here I am. I started off Memorial Day cooking a big breakfast -- homemade biscuits, scrambled eggs with some parmigiano reggiano cheese left over from last night's pasta, and grape tomatoes. And I had some actual goals for the day. I've been working on the redesign for the last couple of weeks, and I was determined to get it all up today. After doing some laundry, playing some Halo, grilling some steaks and portobello mushrooms, and cleaning up the much abused kitchen, it was time. This isn't much, but if I wait for the perfect design and the perfect kickoff entry, the new site might never go live. It's a start.